No Due Time
by Hidden Relevance
Summary: A Reaper!Vaako experiment that has taken on a life of its own. That's right, I said REAPER!VAAKO. Note: This has become the prologue for a longer series starting with a big bang fic. Be on the look out for Her Due Time early in 2012!


**I decided to tackle the odd concept of a Reaper!Vaako mostly as an experiment in the very formal, almost history sounded language that I always think of when I think of the Necromongers. Not sure if I suceeded: you'll have to let me know! **

**(BTW, this is NOT intended to be a slash fic, but after reading it again, I can see how it could be taken that way. I'll leave it up to you lol)**

**Surprise surprise, I own neither the Chronicles of Riddick, nor the Doom movie. But I really really want Karl Urban. I'd even be glad to get him with the freaky mohawk. After all, that can be dealt with.**

He has lived this life longer than any but the first. Though he no longer bothers to count the passing of time in the years and months of a now long dead planet, he knows in some buried part of his mind that he carried this name, this title of Lord Vaako, as long as, or perhaps even longer than, he once lived as a human man. It is an unsettling thought.

When he first came to the Necropolis, he was a wreck, barely recognizable as a man and not some starving animal. The then-Lord Marshal had found him scrounging out an existence on the burnt out husk of a world that not even scholars could remember was once called Earth, the very birthplace of their species. He had not planned to fight back when the armored man has raised his weapon to kill him, to "offer the creature a mercy."

But he had. The warrior he'd thought long dead inside his skin came roaring to the surface, and what should have been a hunger-weakened body proved itself still stronger and faster than any who stood against him. Three of the warriors flanking him had fallen in less than the space of a heartbeat, and he'd been turning to the leader when suddenly his adversary was not there.

The animal had spun around, and was surprised to find a hand at his throat stronger even than his own. One even less human than his own. He'd been thrown nearly a hundred feet, crashing against bare rock with a sickening crunch.

But then it had been his attacker's turn to be surprised, as with a feral growl at the blinding pain of his bones knitting themselves back together, he levered himself to his feet. He settled himself against the pain and struck again this time killing four more before he was again face to face with the unnatural strength of the invaders' leader. This time, he was attacked in a way that was far stranger, far more sinister. There was a scent heavy with death, and then a spectral hand was clawing through him, tearing deeper as if to rip the very soul from him.

He screamed; the pain was beyond anything he'd ever suffered before, and he wanted... oh he wanted to give in and just die. But then, he caught the look of confusion and growing horror on the face before him, and understanding sparked through his heightened mind. He began to laugh out loud, a harsh sound that held nothing of mirth. For the first time since he had been attacked, for the first time in far longer than anyone but him could possibly remember, he spoke, his voice hoarse from disuse and grief for all the things he'd lost.

"I have no soul."

…..

The Lord Marshal had been intrigued despite himself, and, though the stranger had slaughtered seven of his own personal guard, he was taken with them when the planet was finally abandoned.

"I will give you something I can see you need," the Lord Marshal had said. "I will give you something to believe in, to fight for. And I will give you a name."

The creature was shaved and shorn, and taken before the Quasidead. They could leech little from the stranger's mind, crying out only that he was "Deathless, undying. We cannot reach him. Cannot read him. He is deathless... deathless."

The Lord Marshal was unshaken by the psychics' failures. He simply ordered the stranger subjected to the pain and agony of the Mark. It took far longer to permanently wound him than any of the Converted expected. Any but the Lord Marshal, of course. Even then, the mark was paler than the others, faded as if he'd worn the scar for years and years. Still, the Lord Marshal noted, the Mark had served its purpose. Something little more than an animal had entered the chamber, but it was a Necromonger who left it. The man who stood before the Lord Marshal was strong, intelligent, haunted. And, like all who have ever needed a cause and been given one, he was utterly loyal.

At the Lord Marshal's decree, he was Lord Vaako, the Undying.

He was not, at all, well liked. Most felt he was something unnerving: this man who could not die and so would never see the Underverse he now fought for. He had become a fanatic, had Vaako, and he threw himself into the life that he'd been thrust into. After all, he had nothing else to live for.

The Lord Marshal understood all of that, as strange as it was for his underlings to consider. Though the younger looking man never spoke of it to the Lord Marshal, his new guard and pet, as others less powerful and more spiteful called the stranger in their midst, had likely had everything he knew and loved ripped away from him over the years, however many of those years he might have lived. That was enough to drive any man to search for something that might give him meaning. That 'Vaako' had chosen to believe that the Underverse could give his loved ones' deaths meaning was simply a stroke of luck for the Necromonger campaign.

Years past with the Undying serving as the Lord Marshal's right hand. Some believed the near-silent Convert was to be the Lord Marshal's successor, but Vaako knew better. He would never see the Underverse, and ndeed could never make that pilgrimage, never become the Holy Halfdead. It was better that he did not, he decided. He remembered a time long gone when he'd served as another man's second. When he'd fought at that man's back time and time again. That life had been Vaako's first to end, had ended with Vaako becoming the anomaly he now was. Still, he had been content while it lasted.

And so too, he was content to simply serve his Lord Marshal.

…..

But such contentment could not last.

While Vaako was immortal, the Lord Marshal he swore to was not. That leader died in his due time, and another took his place.

This new Lord Marshal did little to earn Vaako's loyalty. His place beside the throne was usurped by one Necro and then another: first a Purifier, than a newly promoted General, then a mere soldier of the ranks with a blade buried in his back. Lord Vaako's title remained, but his identity was perhaps forgotten. None lived who had seen his early days, and none believed that such a man could exist. The Lord Marshal made it clear that he, certainly, felt such things foolish.

Nor was that the only reason for Vaako's discontent. He had heard the rumors, of a genocide that had nothing to do with the Necromonger faith, and everything to do with the Lord Marshal's own fear of death. Such fear was hardly befitting a leader, but Vaako could not find anything within him to care. So he remained, unwilling to follow, but more unwilling to take up arms and kill for the right to lead.

Later, perhaps merely for his own amusement, the Lord Marshal sought, in a rather ostentatious and slyly sinister display, to buy the Lord Vaako's loyalty. He was given a gift in the form of a young bride, newly Converted from a fallen world. She was beautiful, and as the Lord Marshal knew, quite deadly.

Though the Lord Marshal kept his silence about the woman's past, few others did. It was said she had killed at least a pair of husbands on her world. She had used them to further her own ends and then discarded them when she felt their usefulness at an end. There was no doubt in the Necropolis that the Lord Marshal hoped her new husband would come to a similar fate.

Little did he know, the Lord Marshal underestimated the new Dame Vaako. While yes, she sought to use him shamelessly, her goal was to see her husband sit upon the throne _before_ he died. Once there, well, there she intended to see herself a widow. There was no doubt in her mind that she deserved such a rise through the ranks, and she was certain her husband would do whatever he must to ensure she get it.

…..

A handful of years passed by with Vaako uncaring what he did or who he served.

His pretty bride had shown her colors on more than one occasion, and by little more than the skin of Vaako's teeth, had dragged them both back up into the Lord Marshal's circle of favorites. Vaako had not protested; after all, he had little to fear of her schemes turning for the worst. She would find her soul ripped away long before Vaako's ever would be. She was all unknowing of that fact. She'd come to her husband's bed unaware of his true nature, and utterly scornful of the rumors of that truth. She did her best to control her husband, and he simply let her think she could.

In a deep place within him, Lord Vaako wondered if he would continue on this way after the Lord Marshal and his own wife found death in their due times. He wondered if he could stand it.

…..

He did not expect it, the day change stood before him. The breeder stood tall before the Lord Marshal, refusing to kneel, refusing to yield.

And in the presence of that animal staring down the Necro leader, that animal daring to challenge all before him; in that presence, something within Vaako awakened and answered the call of an alpha.

John Grimm raised his head and breathed in the air for the first time in a thousand years or more. The Riddick would not back down, would not be defeated. The Riddick, he thought, might just prove himself worthy of a throne. To be worthy of the Undying's loyalty.

Out of sight of his treacherous wife and the Lord Marshal, 'Vaako's' lips curled into a feral grin.

"You keep what you kill, Riddick" He whispered, knowing somehow the other predator would hear. "You keep what you kill."

Finally, John mused, here was a man the Reaper could respect.

**Reviews make me smile! BTW, this is just a one-shot, so don't be looking for chapters to come.**


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